Landscaping with Native Plants: Healing Our Home Turf

Karen Bussolini photo of garden with Purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) with Black-eyed Susans (Rudbeckia 'Goldsturm'), Calamagrostis 'Karl Foerster'

Landscaping with Native Plants is about ecological thinking as much as it is about plants. We need to recognize that our yards are part of an ecosystem and that everything we do on our home turf can heal and support that ecosystem or can cause damage, often without our knowing.

This lavishly illustrated talk features my photographs of attractive home landscapes based on natural systems and using native plants, from the ground layer all the way up to shrubs and trees. Readily available native plants that thrive in eastern North America will be highlighted, including plants that are adapted to difficult conditions such as rocky slopes, poor soil, shade and damp areas.

Native landscapes are diverse and sustainable. They attract and support birds and other wildlife. Using nature as a guide can lead to great savings of time and money, reduce runoff and soil erosion, cool the atmosphere, reduce or eliminate watering and fertilizer use and knit together plant and animal communities that have become fractured by development and common landscaping practices. And native landscapes convey a sense of place. They “feel right” in the way they express and reflect the character of the region.

 

Contact Karen to book this talk.

 

Check out Karen’s native plant stories in Wildflower

Every Yard Counts

Hold Your Ground

Sedges Have Edges